"Spiritual But Not Religious Is Not Enough: We Are a 'We'” (Pt. 3) by Rev. Jillian Hankamer

September  7, 2025

Matthew 7:1-5 and 1 Corinthians 12:12-26 

“Don’t pick on people, jump on their failures, criticize their faults—unless, of course, you want the same treatment. That critical spirit has a way of boomeranging. It’s easy to see a smudge on your neighbor’s face and be oblivious to the ugly sneer on your own. Do you have the nerve to say, ‘Let me wash your face for you,’ when your own face is distorted by contempt? It’s this whole traveling road-show mentality all over again, playing a holier-than-thou part instead of just living your part. Wipe that ugly sneer off your own face, and you might be fit to offer a washcloth to your neighbor.”

1. Introduction: We had the same grandmother

            -After this week I’m even more convinced Lillian Daniel and I would be friends

            -Daniel is author of When “Spiritual But Not Religious” Is Not Enough

            -have been using her book for this three-week series

-know we’d be friends because she writes about grandmother, Ms. Calhoun who she intros this way, “Some people have grandmothers who teach them how to make waffles. Mine taught me how to make her a gin and tonic.”^[1]

-told you before about my paternal grandmother who was 90 lbs soaking wet of mean, chain-smoking, totally ungrandmother-like attitude

                        -only bumper sticker on car was “Fat Birds Don’t Fly”

-Like Lillian, whose grandmother insisted on being called Ms. Calhoun, we called mine “Jake” - still don’t know why

-Also know we’d bond over our grandmothers because of Ms. Calhoun and her dog Amos

-Daniel says, “On many occasions, Ms. Calhoun could be found standing our in her yard in a lace and silk bathrobe, firing a gun, allegedly at her neighbors’ squirrels, but we all suspected she was firing at the neighbors themselves.”^[2]

-reason for tension was dog Amos who neighbors said “ran wild around the neighborhood late at night, knocking over everyone’s garbage. They would awake to find a mess all over the sidewalks, grocery bags shredded and torn up, tuna fish cans thrown around, leftover food rotting on front doormats, all because Amos had been at work.”^[3]

-Ms. Calhoun always denied Amos was culprit “even when people had seen Amos at the scene of the crime…”^[4]

-Eventually Amos died and as Daniel says, “The small Southern neighborhood breathed a sigh of relief. Finally, there would be peace in the valley.”^[5]

-Except two days after Amos’ passing there was garbage everywhere again. Then again 2 weeks later.

-Obviously wasn’t Amos and neighbors “began to wander over to Ms. Calhoun’s driveway and speak a few awkward words of apology...That strange mutt Amos lived on in memory for years as a reminder that we should judge not, lest we be judged.”^[6]

-Until….”...a few years after [Amos] death, someone in our family actually spied the creature that was knocking over trashcans. It was not a runaway dog, not a sneaky raccoon, not a mischievous cat, but a much rarer species of scavenger…It was a Pall Mall-smoking, lace-bathrobe-wearing grandmother, sneaking out every few months at three in the morning to knock over her neighbors’ trashcans and avenge the memory of Amos. Years after his death. For she would not be judged. Even though she was wrong. She would make them wrong too.”^[7]

2. Lillian’s point: what if we really didn’t judge each other?

-In this final week of Spiritual But Not Religious is Not Enough, let’s talk about thing church should always be doing, what makes us the church, what sets us apart: following Jesus

-Question: “What would the world look like if we were to all take Jesus’ words from the Gospel to heart and stop judging one another but instead live together in generosity?”^[8]

-Story about her Ms. Calhoun and AMos might seem ridiculous, but how many of us identify with that level of petty?

-As Daniel says, “...why do we fall into these traps and cycles in the church?”^[9]

-She describes people in her grandmother’s neighborhood as “...caught up in a cycle of blame and excuse-making”^[10] that made original offense inconsequential

            -cycle led to not seeing one another as real people

            -too caught up in blame game

-Jesus’ words in Matthew 7 “...not just a scolding, it’s a prescription for a better life, as in ‘You need to do this.’ As in, ‘We need to do this.’”^[11]

            -not a lesson Daniel’s grandmother ever learned

-as she says, “[Ms. Calhoun] never got that log out of her eye and her life in the neighborhood devolved into a small world of ‘me’ verses ‘them.’ She sat perched on the lawn chair…with a BB gun, distant from her neighbors…I never knew any of her neighbors’ names. They were always ‘them.’”^[12]

3. “They”

-One of the worst parts of formalized clergy gatherings is introductions

-invariably have to talk about “your context” and share how your ministry is going

-not enjoyable b/c as Daniel diagnoses these sessions almost always “...devolve into one of two extremes, the whining session or the bragging extravaganza. And yet we continue to throw clergy in rooms and ask them to share. It’s a disaster waiting to happen.”^[13]

-when conversations go well empathy carries the day. You realize you’re not alone.

            -normal not to have enough hours in the day

-normal wonder how to preach in light of natural disasters and human cruelty

-normal to worry about attendance and if we’ll make the budget this year

-when conversations go poorly they can “...become a pile-on, where negativity, fatalism and blame take over the room like toxic  gas. When it goes wrong, each pastor comes up with a story worse than the one before, until the happy clergy start to believe that they must be in denial as to what is really going on. One story after another is told about congregations who make life difficult for their pastors.”

-rest assured, my conversations about Northminster do not fall into this later category

-I am blessed to honestly love my job

-but have been in later category at previous churches due to unhappiness, insecurity, lack of support

-isn’t good or nice or particularly Christ-like but clergy are human

-where such conversations are dangerous is when “them” and “they” takes center-stage

-As Daniel explains, “Does the pastor vent by saying, ‘We really need to amp up our pledging’….Or does she say, ‘These people have got to understand…I keep telling them…if they want more programs they need to give more…?’”^[14]

-hear the problem?

-in this sort of diagnostic language congregation becomes patient to be fixed or healed

            -puts pastor in role of fixer or doctor

-”’They’ need fixing, and ‘I’ am the one to come in, from the outside, and do it.”^[15]                                   

4. The Body of Christ

-Whether church at large or individual clergy, falling into “they/them” way of thinking and being is the antithesis of Body of Christ

-Or as Daniel says, “The image of the body of Christ flies in the face of such talk. Paul is clear that while the church body has many members, we are all still part of one body. In other words, we are a ‘we.’”^[16]

-”Until ‘they’ becomes ‘we,’ there is no body of Christ.”

-”They/them” speaking and thinking is asking for objectication and harmful generalities

-doesn’t for identifying with community

-almost impossible to see “the collective speck [in community’s eye] that is troubling the whole body.”^[17]

-As Daniel says, “Seeing that speck is where real ministry beings.”

-being aware of what’s troubling the community, what’s troubling “us,” what “we” are struggling with is how people know they’re loved

5. Good News

-GN this morning: As the church, Body of Christ, “we” not “they,” “...the most important member of the plurality is Jesus, who binds us together…so that nobody, even the pastor, gets to camp out alone in a lawn chair with BB gun, cursing the neighbors.”^[18]

-called to see speck in each other’s eyes and help each other remove them

-called to be honest about our shortcomings and mistakes

-called to honor and remember that we are a “we”

-”we’re called to be the church, to share the backyard and gather around the picnic table with garbage-chasing dogs, judging neighbors, finger-pointing experts, eccentric old ladies, somehow all of us invited by Christ to be a ‘we’ in a world of ‘theys.’”^[19]

^[1] Lillian Daniel, When Spiritual But Religious Is Not Enough: Seeing God in Suprising Places, Even the Church, Jericho Books, 2013, pg. 51.

^[2] Ibid, pg. 52.

^[3] Ibid.

^[4] Ibid.

^[5] Ibid, pg. 53.

^[6] Ibid.

^[7] Ibid, pgs. 53-54.

^[8] Ibid.

^[9] Ibid.

^[10] Ibid, pg. 55.

^[11] Ibid.

^[12] Ibid.

^[13] Ibid, pg. 56.

^[14] Ibid, pg. 57

^[15] Ibid, pg. 58.

^[16] Ibid, pg. 59.

^[17] Ibid.

^[18] Ibid.

^[19] Ibid, pg. 60.